Often times, telecommunication device users become frustrated when interacting with call centers. For example, users may be forced to navigate through tedious menus from interactive voice response (“IVR”) systems, during which a pre-recorded, or computer synthesized voice may, rather impersonally, ask a variety of annoying questions of the user. A user typically can respond to the questions orally, or alternately by pressing numeric buttons on the keypad of the telephone in order to cause the telephone to emit, via the audio communications channel, one or a sequence of dual-tone multi-frequency (“DTMF”) tones for recognition by the IVR system. Problems commonly arise during both modes of communication.
One problem arises during DTMF tone production, when the user has a keypad with a nonstandard mapping of letters to numbers. For example, if the IVR system is designed for the letter mapping of a standard keypad (where, for example a single key corresponds to the number 2 as well as the letters “A”, “B”, and “C”), the user of a phone with a keypad having a different letter mapping may experience difficulty, as a different DTMF tone (or no tone at all) may be produced when the user presses the desired key to be communicated to the IVR.
Other problems arise when a user attempts to interact with a call center orally in a noisy environment, such as near automobile traffic, where loud music is playing, or nearby other people talking at loud volume levels. In such situations, background noise can overwhelm the user's verbal responses to an IVR system, making proper recognition of the user's utterances difficult, if not impossible. This same problem can afflict human call center agents who attempt to interact with the user orally. Moreover, the user can experience difficulty in listening to the audio-based information in a noisy environment. These problems can lead to the user repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempting interactions with the call center, not being able to interact in a convenient or timely manner, and experiencing dissatisfaction and frustration.
When human agents are employed to verbally dialogue or interact with the user rather than utilizing IVR interactions, the costs of the employer generally increase, and this approach will not solve all the problems. In some cases where an agent is instructed to read predetermined scripts to a user that an IVR could have been programmed to read, a poor and impersonal user experience can result. An IVR system or a human agent may needlessly ask a user questions and waste the time of the user. For example, a user may spend minutes navigating through the initial questions or menus of an IVR system, during which time the IVR system may verbally present various information that the user either already knows or does not care about, such as when the information is not relevant to the situation of the user. Typically, an IVR or a human agent knows little about the context of an incoming caller when the voice connection is recently established. The IVR system or agent may not initially know the likely reason that the user is calling about, or even information about the identity of the caller, whether the identity of the caller really is who the caller says, and so on. Furthermore, agents working at a call center may be divided by, or assigned to, groups able or preferred to perform specific tasks or work with specific users. The user is typically initially verbally queried to determine more information about the context of the user, (such as the nature of the user's need), before the user's voice call is transferred to an agent more capable of satisfying the user.
In order for certain transactions to be made with the assistance of a call center, a caller may also be asked to verbally prove their identity by providing authentication information, which can include information such as the user's address, the user's partial or full social security number, an account password, and other security verification questions. Some IVR systems or agents may require, such as for security purposes, that the user provide account identification and authentication information initially before any substantive problem solving can begin. In some cases, the call center requests account information in order to track the history of the interactions with a customer, for example with customer relationship management (“CRM”) software. Asking for and orally proving the identity of customers takes the customer's time and also incurs increased risks of misuse of the security authentication information, such as by a third party overhearing the user uttering security information, or by the human agent misusing the authentication information (e.g., performing identity theft with the user's address and social security number).
Call interception technology has alleviated certain problems of interacting with call centers; but even with call interception techniques on a mobile device, there still can exist the above-mentioned user frustrations when connection to an IVR system or agent becomes required in order to address the user's need. The need exists for a system that overcomes the above problems, as well as one that provides additional benefits. Overall, the examples herein of some prior or related systems and their associated limitations are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of existing or prior systems will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon reading the following Detailed Description